Author Comments

This is the 2nd installment of Josh Tam Mysteries. Which is G2. This time it is more of a Visual Novel format.

Josh Tam sets out on a journey to investigate the mysteries at Easter Island and to search for the lost child of his client Mrs. Flores in this Visual novel adventure puzzle flash game.
But a mystic adventure full of puzzles and riddles await him and his gang!

:::::::NOTES::::::::::::
1. Thank you to all who played through and left useful comments.
2. Yes, this is a text-based game and more of a visual novel than an adventure game, but still I do not have an option for visual novel category, so this will go under adventure
3. Special thanks to those who voted high. The higher the popularity and rating, the bigger the chance I will continue with the sequel!
4. Thanks for the Daily 5th place award!
5. Thanks to Newgrounds Admin (Tom?) for the frontpage!

Reviews

Rated 5 / 5 stars2013-06-08 03:26:48

Rated 4 / 5 stars2013-02-11 04:16:34

Another great part of this great series. As before, the interface is intuitive and easy to use, the graphics are all clear and composed, and layered in a way that makes them seem realistic. The plot and sound are the biggest achievements of this series though, they combine to provide a really thrilling and adventurous experience. Keep up the great work!

Rated 3.5 / 5 stars2013-02-08 23:10:52

Rated 3 / 5 stars2013-02-03 16:25:16

I actually enjoyed the adventure-story format, and I thought the puzzles were tricky, but not impossible with a little observation and logic. There were several instances that required trial-and-error, which is a little on the frustrating side, but I disagree that it was really necessary with the moai. The first time I placed the three objects, and returned to the moai, it was easy to tell which were correct. All it took was switching the incorrectly-placed objects into the right locations.

As you continue to create these games, your drawing (a purely technical skill) will improve, as will your ability to write dialogue. You aren't doing poorly in either area, though they can only get better with time and practice.

I would be interested in seeing a little more depth and more investigation in your next game; it wasn't shallow, precisely, but the bulk of the game consisted of clicking around the area to move things in order to solve puzzles. I'm a big fan of mystery and detective games, and the genre gives you so many possibilities for plots, locales, and intrigues. I think more could have been made of this, satisfying as it was. Decoding the glyphs, interacting with the natives that were mentioned, searching for survivors, and so on would have added a greater sense of richness and scope. The glyphs might have imparted some obscure legend leading into the sequel; the natives could have provided hints about the island puzzles or the location of the plane, offered quests, or just given more background information on the island and the moai mystery; the survivors might have helped lead the detective to other resources or offered helpful information about the boy's possible location ("Just before the plane went down, I noticed smoke coming from the trees over there.").

These stories have the potential to be really engaging, and I look forward to the next one!

Rated 5 / 5 stars2013-01-31 20:34:04

Oh wow, I am amazed that I was able to beat this without the walkthrough. It is extremely difficult, but beatable as I have found. It reminds me of Morningstar, which also involves decoding an ancient language. I had to use a walkthrough on Morningstar, but then I wished I had tried harder. So I was determined to figure this one out on my own.

I don't know why those specific items go on those specific slabs, but a sensible player will try placing the items on the slabs and then look around to see if anything has changed. The bottom of the cliff is an obvious place to look since it's a dead end. I realized there must be three items so I was able to figure out what the third item was because I had already found the other two in corresponding places. Once you figure out each slab is supposed to have a different item, you can find the right combination in a maximum of three tries. So RadCarrot is wrong because if you made the slab lower when you put the grass on it then the puzzle would be too easy. There are only three items so it becomes a simple matter of trying each of them and then if one of them instantly locks the slab into place you'd know too quickly, and by the third slab you'd only have one item left.

Then in the cave, there's only one place where you can do anything at first so naturally the player should use trial and error to find the right combination. Once he's tried all 8 of them and had nothing happen, he should then go through them all again but check the rest of the cave while each combination is in place. The door is an obvious place to check, although most players might assume that the door wouldn't open until all three other sections of the cave have been solved somehow. Also, once they get through the door they might assume that those other two places were just clues that were meant to help solve the door puzzle which they just solved by trial and error, so they may be reluctant to go back into the main room later. Luckily, I had a hunch the main room wasn't finished.

The next room in the cave was the part of the game that tempted me most to use the walkthrough. I could see there were 256 possible combinations for the red button and the blue button, which made me very reluctant to use trial and error this time. Thus I agonized over how to interpret the bizarre clues on the walls. Ten circles? But there are only two rows of eight transforming stones for a total of eight stones. I eventually realized that all ten circles must apply to only one row of four, since there are two sets of ten circles after all. It was pretty clear that the pattern on the left wall applied to the left row of stones and the pattern on the right applied to the row of stones on the right. The weird kanji-like symbols didn't make any sense to me so I thought it best to focus on the chains of circles. Why ten? And why were they linked together with either one line or four? Finally I realized that each wall had exactly three four-line links, which divided the circles into four groups. Those groups must correspond to the stones because there are four of each, I reasoned. And so the shapes of the stones must correspond to the numbers one through four. The only question that remained was which end of the circle chain was the left end and which end was the right end. Since there were only two choices for each chain, I was at a point where I could just use trial and error to figure out the rest.

After seeing nothing happen, it was a simple matter of remembering the red and blue lights in the other room and noticing that the two buttons next to the stones are red and blue as well. So I returned to look at the lights, retrieved the colored stones and proceeded to try using them everywhere.

Wow! A lengthy review! You really deserve a pat on the back for playing through without referring to the walkthrough and also using the cave wall patterns to help decode the stones.

In the first game (G1), the puzzles were easy and the main theme was to give players a horror atmosphere thus I received some complains saying the game was too easy. So in this game (G2), I decided to make a harder puzzle. I never realized that it was gonna become very hard to the point that those people who said "too easy" gave up on this one or complained that there were not enough clues. But I believe I left enough clues so that players can still solve the puzzle without help from the walkthrough, and you succeeded!

Thanks a lot for spending time playing and reviewing the game, and most of all, thank you for proving that the game is solvable even though hard!